Early lacrosse stick architecture includes wooden frames having a construction consisting of a solid handle, one sidewall, and a scoop all formed as a single continuous structure. Drawbacks of these wooden frames include poor resistance to water damage, susceptibility to fractures, relatively high weight, and substantial manufacturing costs due to the labor required to manually form the lacrosse stick into the desired shape.
Subsequent developments in lacrosse head structures include employing plastic injection molding to form a single integral frame including a solid base, a solid scoop, and a pair of solid sidewalls. These plastic lacrosse heads provided increased stiffness and decreased weight as compared to the prior wooden lacrosse heads. They were also easier and less expensive to manufacture than the prior wooden sticks.
Subsequent developments involved forming these plastic lacrosse heads with openings in the sidewalls (“open sidewalls”). The lacrosse heads with open sidewalls are lighter in weight than lacrosse heads with solid walls and typically provide more flex. This decrease in weight is beneficial because it can improve the handling characteristics of these lacrosse heads and decreases the material costs and the manufacturing costs associated with the forming thereof. However, the absence of material from the sidewalls can also cause these lacrosse heads to be insufficiently stiff for resisting breakage or fracture.
To prevent premature breakage or fracture of the open sidewall lacrosse heads, reinforcing structures, such as stiffening ribs, are integrally molded into the sidewalls. These stiffening ribs are intended to provide the lacrosse head with sufficient stiffness for reinforcement and prevention of breaking or fracturing. A drawback, however, of these stiffening ribs is that they typically increase the weight of the lacrosse head. For this reason, the stiffening ribs may increase material costs as well as manufacturing costs of the lacrosse head. In view of the foregoing, a person of ordinary skill in the art would understand that the design of a lacrosse head requires a balance between the stiffness and the weight of the lacrosse head.
Recently, structures have been incorporated into lacrosse heads to provide increased dampening or absorption characteristics to facilitate catching of a lacrosse ball and to prevent the ball from bouncing out of the head either while it is being caught or while it is being cradled by a player. These structures can also provide no-skid characteristics to impart more spin to the ball as it is exiting the head, which improves passing and shooting accuracy. These structures can be integrally molded during the injection molding of the head or during an overmolding process. In any event, these structures provide additional structure to the head and thus increase the weight of the head. This is particularly true when the additional material is added to the head through subsequent processing, such as overmolding processes.
It is therefore desirable to provide a lacrosse head that is sufficiently stiff for resisting breakage, yet also has a relatively light weight for improving handling characteristics, decreasing material costs, and decreasing manufacturing costs associated therewith.